5 Terrifying Bastardizations of the Wikipedia Model

The fact that Wikipedia lets anybody edit just isn't enough for some people. Some demand their own Wiki, damn it!

What kind of people feel the need to set up an entirely separate reference? Why, that would be the ones who live on the fringes of society, who need a place where their people can go to be shielded from the whole "outside world" thing.

Reading these inbred cousins of Wikipedia is like stepping into a terrifying parallel universe.

#5. Conservapedia

Even if you're the most conservative damned person you know, I'm betting you'll still be plenty creeped out by Conservapedia, which bills itself as a "much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American."

It's tough to argue against that last part, as there are rumors that some of the authors at Wikipedia are not very good Christians, and that others are not even from America at all. It's no wonder Wikipedia's entry for "United States" is nothing but a Photoshopped image of a cow shitting America.

[citation needed]

Luckily, Conservapedia blows the lid off its rival, in its entry on ...

"Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia founded by entrepreneur and atheist Jimmy Wales and philosophy professor Larry Sanger...Despite its official "neutrality policy", Wikipedia has a strong liberal bias. In his article entitled 'Wikipedia lies, slander continue' journalist Joseph Farah stated Wikipedia 'is not only a provider of inaccuracy and bias. It is wholesale purveyor of lies and slander unlike any other the world has ever known.'[1]"

Yes, not even Hitler's own propaganda machine can stand against the pure torrent of evil lies that ushers forth from Wikipedia. Fortunately, these guys are here to restore some balance to this thing. Let's check out Conservapedia's even-handed treatment of, say, liberals:

"A liberal is someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing."

Everything you need to understand about life inside the hardcore conservative bubble is right there in that paragraph. "People with other points of view aren't actually disagreeing with conservatives. They're just pretending to, probably because they're gay little babies!"

Actually, "bubble" probably isn't the right word. The folks at Conservapedia are trying to build something more like a bunker, surrounded by six feet of concrete that no opposing ideas can pierce. If you're wondering how the conservative movement got to DEFCON crazy, I've prepared a helpful timeline:

If it sounds like I'm being critical, some of the entries make valid points. For instance, I defy you to construct an argument against this:

"Vic Eliason of Crosstalk America rightly points out that if all Americans turned homosexual it would only take a few generations for the United States to lose most of the population of the country through lack of procreation. This would make the US more vulnerable to attack by our enemies."

That is in fact what would happen to an entirely gay country. Checkmate, Harvey Milk. Let's look up Hitler:

"...consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.[14]"

At this point you may be calling bullshit, figuring it's some snarky Stephen Colbert-esque mockery of the right. Not so. Conservapedia is the work of Andrew Schlafly, a lawyer and school teacher (let that second one sink in for a moment) and son of famous conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly (these days you can find her complaining about how George Bush wasn't conservative enough).

"Nazi Furs is a furry community who harbor an interest in WWII era Germany for historical, militaristic, strategic, living history, reenactment, or fetish reasons."

Below, according to that page, is an example of a Nazi furry, and the Nazi Fur flag:

Yeah, so that's probably the end of civilization right there.

After taking a break for a couple of days, I worked up the courage to search for "sex." Hmmm... it seems to redirect us to "Yiff." The first thing I see at the top of the page is this warning:

OK, somebody has written something on the subject of furry sex that doesn't conform to furry standards. I have to say that scrolling further down that page took more bravery on my part than all of history's war heroes combined.

Now members of the Denmark furry community can find each other and do furry... Civil War reenactments or whatever they do. But it seems like they should have avoided using a style that's surely going to remind people of those sites that map out the sex offenders in your neighborhood.

"Animal symbolism is common throughout the religion itself, Jesus himself being compared in the Bible to both a lion and a lamb. Christian furry artists, such as XianJaguar and Holly Ann, depict images of Jesus as an anthropomorphic lion. Some Christian furs even refer to this lion form of Jesus as Aslan."

When I finally build my time machine, I'm going to go back and find a pre-Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis and show him this, and see if he doesn't abandon animal imagery, writing and Christianity in one fell swoop.

For further research, see...

Memory Alpha, the world as seen through the eyes of another deep corner of Internet fandom. Specifically, Trekkies. Look up Hitler and find how how he won World War II in an alternate time line where Dr. McCoy inadvertently intervened on his behalf.

#3. Encyclopedia Dramatica

So a bunch of 4chan guys got together and wrote a Wikipedia clone. Most of you know it exists already and, yeah, it chronicles all of the Anonymous memes and raids and so on. So you look up a popular meme like "Scientology" and you get:

"Appropriately, [L Ron Hubbard] finally bit the big green burrito of death from gobbling down too much Vistaril. This was confirmed when Scientologist fagslaves tried to take his corpse to burn it, but were pwned by the Coroner, who got there first."

It's about what you'd expect. You'll see lots of "epic" and "lulz." But try something for me. Go to Google. Type "encyclopedia" into the box and let it suggest a search for you.

That's right. Dramatica is at the top of the list. Above Britannica, Americana; even fucking Encyclopedia Brown.

"In the beginning, America was butthurt by three things that the British trolls were doing: restricting American citizens from buying queer shit from France, Shanghai-ing of U.S. citizens into the British Navy, and giving Native Americans firewater and guns."

"Over 9000 years ago, there was a land that every /b/tard would have been proud to call home. It was a realm made up of awesomeness and win. It was a place full of loli slaves, orgies, neurotic dictators, Jew killing, and shameless wars against the lesser races. This place was called the Roman Empire."

"The original mad scientist. Nik is best known for being an attention whore, an uber-1337 h4x0r...Nik went on to build his own laboratory atop a volcano, before starring in 'The Prestige' as David Bowie."

Swine flu (a.k.a. pig AIDS, burrito blight, or enchiladapocalypse) is permabanning everyone from IRL, just like bird flu was doing from 2004 to 2008, SARS did in 2003, and swine flu 1.0 did in the 1970s. Many current media reports are saying that the US Government did it for the lulz.